John Peel - Disc Jockey - Biography.com Disc Jockey Radio disc jockey and presenter John Peel fueled the British independent music scene by debuting such performers as David Bowie, Joy Division and the Smiths. IN THESE GROUPS Famous British People Synopsis John Peel was born August 30, 1939 in Heswall, England. in 1959 he went to America and became a disc jockey for Radio WRR in Dallas. He returned to England in 1967 and joined pirate radio station Radio London, presenting a late night show. Later that year he began a long career with Radio 1, hosting a number of shows including Top Gear. 1998–2004 he presented Radio 4's popular Home Truths. Profile Radio disc jockey and presenter who fueled the independent music scene in England by debuting such performers as David Bowie, Joy Division, and the Smiths. John Peel was born on August 30, 1939 in Heswall, Merseyside, NW England, United Kingdom.

He was educated at Shrewsbury School, and after completing his national service (1957–9) he went to America and became a disc jockey for Radio WRR in Dallas. He returned to England in 1967 and joined pirate radio station Radio London for a time, presenting a late night show The Perfumed Garden where he championed British underground bands such as Pink Floyd. Later that year John Peel began a long career with Radio 1, hosting a number of shows including Top Gear. He was one of the only BBC disc jockeys to have complete creative control over his playlists, and bands flooded his mailbox with demo tapes and requested to be featured on his legendary "Peel Sessions" live sets. From 1998 to 2004 he presented Radio 4's popular Home Truths, which won four Sony Radio awards in 1999. His many other awards include Melody Maker's DJ of the Year on 11 occasions and the honorary gold Sony radio award in 2002. At the time of his death on October 25, 2004, while on holiday in Peru, he was working on his autobiography.

The book, John Peel: Margrave of the Marshes, was completed by his wife and family and published in 2005. In October that year, John Peel Day marked the first anniversary of his death with over 300 concerts taking place around the world in his honor. He was posthumously made an honorary member of the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004. His son, Tom Ravenscroft, a music journalist, began hosting his own internet music show on BBC Channel 4 Radio in 2006. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us ! Citation Information John Peel | British disc jockey | Britannica.com British disc jockey Alternative Title: John Robert Parker Ravenscroft John Peel Sir Jimmy Savile John Peel, byname of John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (born Aug. 30, 1939, Heswall, Cheshire, Eng.—died Oct.

25, 2004, Cuzco , Peru ), popular British disc jockey who for nearly 40 years, beginning in mid-1960s, was one of the most influential tastemakers in rock music. Peel was renowned for discovering and championing emerging artists and for his connossieurship of groundbreaking offbeat music and performers. John Peel, 1968. Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images The son of a cotton merchant, he grew up in upper-middle-class comfort near Liverpool , for whose powerhouse football (soccer) team he developed a lifelong obsession . After attending boarding school and a stint in the military, he emigrated to the United States in 1960—to Dallas, Texas, where, still using his given last name, Ravenscroft, he worked at the Cotton Exchange and then sold insurance. In 1961 he landed his first (unpaid) job as a disc jockey, at station WRR.

Thereafter, as the British Invasion , led by the Liverpudlian Beatles , swept the United States , he capitalized on his Scouse accent, and, though he had left England before the advent of “Merseybeat,” he became its authentic ambassador on local American airwaves. After working at radio stations in Dallas , Oklahoma City , and San Bernadino, Calif., he returned to the United Kingdom in 1967 to host his late-night, hippy-trippy Perfumed Garden on pirate Radio London . While his fellow deejays cultivated wild and crazy personalities, Ravenscroft, having adopted the last name Peel as a pirate mask, was droll and unflappable but ever the iconoclast . Still, when the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) established Radio 1 in September 1967 in response to the challenge of pirate radio , Peel was one of the new network’s original recruits. From then until the early 21st century, Peel was the advocate for new and often challenging music, playing recordings to which a less adventurous broadcaster or less committed music enthusiast would likely not have given airtime.

In the process he became enamoured of everything from art rock to punk , post-punk, and beyond, introducing his audience to previously “unknown” artists such as David Bowie , Joy Division , the Smiths , Billy Bragg , and countless performers who flooded his mailbox with demo tapes. Meanwhile, he remained steadfastly loyal to an eclectic array of personal favourites that included Captain Beefheart , oddball poet-singer Ivor Cutler , unconventional songwriter Kevin Coyne, abrasive rockers the Fall, Northern Ireland’s Undertones (whose “Teenage Kicks” was Peel’s all-time favourite song), the ethereal Cocteau Twins, and PJ Harvey . Yet the same breadth of taste that tested the boundaries of what could be broadcast on the BBC could also find room for a good-time group like the Faces—Peel famously mimed the mandolin part from Rod Stewart ’s “Maggie May” (1971) on Top of the Pops—and an unlikely love affair with the Eurovision Song Contest, the annual competition sponsored by state-run European television stations to determine the best new pop song.

Britannica Stories Smallpox Evolution More Recent than Previously Thought Never particularly adept technologically (he occasionally played records at the wrong speed), Peel was nevertheless seemingly ageless and effortlessly hip. He was a perennial choice as NME magazine’s favourite deejay of the year, and his year-end “best-of” playlist, the Festive 50, conferred significant cachet for those who found their way onto it, much as his longtime involvement with the Glastonbury Festival helped ensure its status as one of the world’s premiere rock festivals . Likewise, being chosen to record a live Peel Session for his show was a sign of arrival. Those thousands of sessions—many of which were released as commercial recordings—originated as a work-around response to needle time, a longtime requirement of British broadcasting that limited the amount of airtime that could be devoted to playing records. Even after the repeal of this requirement, Peel Sessions remained the signature and mainstay of his program. Peel was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998. He died of a heart attack while on vacation in South America in 2004.

On the anniversary of his last appearance on BBC, the network annually presents an annual celebration, John Peel Day. Happy Birthday, John Peel! A Salute to the World's Greatest Disc Jockeys | New Times Broward-Palm Beach Happy Birthday, John Peel! A Salute to the World's Greatest Disc Jockeys Or sign in with a social account: FACEBOOK GOOGLE + TWITTER YAHOO! Don't have an account yet? Sign Up › Connect. Discover. Share. Get the most out of your experience with a personalized all-access pass to everything local on events, music, restaurants, news and more. Enter your email or sign up with a social account to get started FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ YAHOO! Don't have an account yet? Sign Up › Happy Birthday, John Peel! A Salute to the World's Greatest Disc Jockeys Thursday, August 30, 2012 at 12:53 p.m. Print Article John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, better-known as John Peel, was one of the preeminent English disc jockeys of the past half century.

Born August 30, 1939, Peel was an important tastemaker in the history of music. Peel's distinctive musical voice was formed by his eclectic musical predilections and willingness to nurture dozens of up-and-coming bands. One of the first U.K. disc jockeys to play prog rock and the psychedelic sounds of the burgeoning late '60s English underground, Peel went on to promote Upcoming Events punk, indie, alternative, hip-hop, dance, and metal music without regard for what other programmers seemed to favor. He also initiated a program called the Peel Sessions , which offered a preview of material that was recorded exclusively for his show. These sessions were later released on the Strange Fruit record label, an enterprise partially owned and operated by Peel himself. In addition, he founded Dandelion Records, an avenue for his production work and home for some of the more adventurous acts of early '70s British music. Ironically, for such an iconic Englishman, Peel spent his early professional years in the U.S., landing his first professional gig on KLIF in Dallas, Texas. Due to the so-called "British invasion" of the time, he became the station's official Beatles correspondent.

Returning to his native country in 1967, Peel quickly immersed himself in the early underground scene, filling his programs with commentary about his various musical encounters. In August 1967, he was recruited by BBC Radio 1, where he initiated the Night Ride program, playing music and interviews with artists from outside the fringes of the pop mainstream. Still, his programming choices often drew him into conflicts with the station's hierarchy, particularly when he began delving further and further into the punk movement that was springing up in the mid- to late '70s. Indeed, his show and cult of personality became a mecca for many of the younger musicians of the day, and eventually he became a media star whose writings and pronouncements held sway over other tastemakers of the day. Peels' personal favorites tended to be equally esoteric, with the Fall, the White Stripes, the Undertones' anthem "Teenage Kicks," and the ironically dubbed the Misunderstood, an obscure '60s California band that he later managed, all perched at the top of his personal playlist.

When Peel passed away on October 25, 2004, the victim of a heart attack suffered while on holiday in Peru, he joined a prestigious list of other late, lamented DJs who helped further the cause of popular music through bold pronouncements and commitment to the cause. What follows are others of Peel's ilk. Alan Freed Freed, also known by his radio name "Moondog," began as a disc jockey with a stint on WJW in Cleveland and was later propelled into the national spotlight on the nation's biggest powerhouse, WABC. He is credited by most music historians for championing such early rockers as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino. Although he helped bring black music to the young white teenaged masses and starred in many of the budding rock 'n' roll movies of the era (chief among them, Rock Around the Clock), Freed's career was tainted after he was charged with accepting payola (a practice common among radio personalities who took cash and other gifts for playing certain records). It was further damaged when he hosted a television dance show that captured young black singer Franke Lymon dancing with a white teenaged girl (Hairspray, anyone?).

He subsequently suffered a humiliating downward spiral and eventually ended up working for a series of smaller stations, including a monthlong tenure on WQAM in Miami. He died a broken man in Palm Springs, California, in January 1965. Murray the K The self-proclaimed "Fifth Beatle," the former Murray Kaufman gained fame as a flamboyant showman throughout the '50s, '60s, and '70s with his robust rock 'n' roll rants. However, he reached his peak of success after penetrating the Fab Four's inner circle during their initial trip to New York and subsequent American tour. He went on to introduce Bob Dylan when the musician went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 -- "It's not rock, it's not folk, it's Bob Dylan," he said at the time -- and successfully segued into the emerging FM radio realms. Later, Murray introduced a new type of television show that featured numerous pop stars of the day in a video format that prefigured MTV by a good decade and a half. Sadly, he succumbed to cancer in 1982.

Dick Biondi Nicknamed "The Wild I-tralian," a handle that would definitely stray from the realms of political correctness these days, Biondi was one of the original "screamers." A radio wild man who boasted of being fired no fewer than 23 times, Biondi was also credited with being the first American DJ to play the Beatles, initially spinning "Please Please Me" on Chicago's WLS in February 1963. He later introduced the Beatles and the Stones at the Hollywood Bowl while working at KRLA in Los Angeles. Casey Kasem Kemal Amin Kasem, otherwise known simply as Casey Kasem, has one of the most distinctive voices in modern radio. Best-known for his nationally syndicated show American Top 40, he offers a weekly countdown to the top hits of the week and educates the American masses on the songs and artists dominating the airwaves. Frankie Crocker Given the nickname "Hollywood" for his unapologetic self-promotion, Crocker gained fame for his on-air duties at soul station WWRL and later top 40 ratings magnet WMCA.

He climbed to even greater heights when he took over WBLS-FM as program director and brought the station to the top of the ratings during the late '70s. He also served as a major champion of disco, taking advantage of all the extravagance the era had to offer. When Studio 54 was at the height of its popularity, Crocker rode in through the front entrance on a white stallion. He'd sign off for the day by lighting a candle and inviting female listeners to share a candlelight bath. Crocker is credited with coining the phrase "urban contemporary" to describe his particular radio format, and it's said he also introduced as many as 30 R&B and disco artists to the musical mainstream. Wolfman Jack With his distinctive rasp and wild howl, Wolfman Jack added his own distinctive hipster style to the airwaves and made himself an enduring personality. In the process, he gained fame on a border radio station, XERF and, at 250,000 watts, his transmissions could be heard nationwide. It was said that a listener could drive from New York to L.A. and never lose the signal.

After moving to KDAY in Los Angeles, he got picked up in syndication and was eventually heard over 2,000 stations across the country. Wolfman also made a marked impression on the music business himself; he released two albums and inspired at least two tribute songs -- the Guess Who's "Clap for the Wolfman" and Todd Rundgren's "Wolfman Jack." The Doors' song "The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat" was supposedly directly influenced by Wolfman's early broadcasts, and the Grateful Dead's "Ramble on Rose" boasted the lines: "Just like Crazy Otto/Just like Wolfman Jack/Sittin' plush with a royal flush/Aces back to back." He loaned his voice to several other songs as well, including various chart contenders by Sugarloaf and Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids. He died of a heart attack on July 1, 1995. John Peel, 65; disc jockey launched dozens of bands - The Boston Globe John Peel, 65; disc jockey launched dozens of bands By Jill Lawless, Associated Press | October 27, 2004 LONDON -- John Peel, a longtime British Broadcasting Corp.

disc jockey whose enthusiasm for the offbeat, the eclectic, and the obscure launched the careers of dozens of bands, has died, the BBC said yesterday. He was 65. The broadcaster said Mr. Peel suffered a heart attack Monday while vacationing in Cuzco, Peru, with his wife, Sheila. Mr. Peel's program on Radio 1, the BBC's flagship pop music station, exerted a huge influence for more than 30 years. He was often the first to play demo tapes by little-known bands, and his enthusiasm propelled some to fame. Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said Blair -- who once played guitar in a college band called Ugly Rumours -- was "genuinely saddened" by the news. He said Mr. Peel "was a unique voice in British broadcasting who used that voice to unearth new talent and different subjects and bring them to the awareness and make them accessible to a much wider audience." Mr.

Peel promoted reggae, hip-hop, and punk on the sometimes conservative BBC, and championed acts ranging from Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie to The Smiths, The Fall, Pulp, and Northern Irish punks The Undertones, whose "Teenage Kicks" Mr. Peel rated his favorite song. His live studio sessions were coveted by bands, and many were released on record as the "Peel Sessions." "Over the years we've had almost everybody, except The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, of the kind of big bands of the past," Mr. Peel once said. "More recently Oasis -- I never really thought Oasis were much good, to be honest, so they didn't do one." Bands he did like, such as post-punk outfit Joy Division and its successor, New Order, often remained deeply grateful. "If it wasn't for John Peel, there would be no Joy Division and no New Order," band member Bernard Sumner said.

"He was one of the few people to give bands that played alternative music a chance to get heard, and he continued to be a champion of cutting-edge music throughout his life." Blur frontman Damon Albarn said, "John Peel's patronage was for me, like countless other musicians, one of the most significant things that happened to us in our careers." Pulp's Jarvis Cocker said Mr. Peel "was one of those few people about whom you could truly say that the world would have been a much different place without him. For many years he almost single-handedly championed new and challenging music in the UK." Elvis Costello called him "a great man, a fabulous curmudgeon -- he was as rare as the music that he loved." Guy Garvey, frontman of Manchester band Elbow, said: "We owe him everything. "He was the first person to ever play us on the radio, which I am sure lots of people can say." Mr. Peel was born John Ravenscroft near Liverpool in 1939. As a teenager, he later said, his life was changed by hearing Elvis Presley singing "Heartbreak Hotel." Mr. Peel later joined the British army and worked in a cotton mill.

In the early 1960s he moved to Dallas, where his roots in Liverpool -- newly famous as home of The Beatles -- enabled him to get a job on WRR radio, hosting a program called "Kat's Karavan." He then worked at stations in Oklahoma City and San Bernardino, Calif. Returning to Britain, Mr. Peel worked on the pirate station Radio London, broadcasting from a boat off the English coast, where he adopted the name John Peel. He joined the BBC in 1967, broadcasting on Radio 1 and internationally on the World Service. Since 1998, he also presented "Home Truths," a whimsical show about the travails of family life, on the BBC's talk-based Radio 4. He leaves his wife and four children. Funeral details were not immediately announced. © Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

More: John Peel Biography (Radio Personality) Died: 25 October 2004 (heart attack) Birthplace: Heswall, England Best known as: Influential British DJ from BBC's Radio 1 Name at birth: John Ravenscroft John Peel was a disc jockey on BBC's Radio 1 whose 37 years of broadcasting out-of-the-mainstream acts helped popularize reggae, punk and hip-hop in Britain. Peel got his radio start in the United States in the early 1960s, working in Texas, Oklahoma and California. In 1967 he returned to the United Kingdom and began a late-night program, The Perfumed Garden, on a pirate radio station called Radio London. Later that year he was hired by Radio 1 and began a show called Top Gear. Peel's genuine interest in a wide variety of musical styles and his low-key on-air personality helped make him one of the most popular and influential broadcasters in the U.K. In 1986 he began what were called The Peel Sessions, studio recordings of little-known bands that were then packaged and sold as EPs and LPs.

In addition to his show on Radio 1, Peel hosted a radio magazine, Home Truths, on Radio 4, which first aired in 1998. He is credited with helping the careers of dozens of bands and artists, from Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa and David Bowie to The Ramones , Joy Division and The White Stripes . In 2003 he agreed to write his autobiography, but in 2004 he died suddenly of a heart attack while on vacation in Peru. Copyright © 1998-2017 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved. John Peel | John Peel Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Life and career Early life Peel was born in Heswall Cottage Hospital in Heswall on the Wirral Peninsula, near Liverpool , and grew up in the nearby village of Burton. His father was an upper middle class cotton merchant, and he was sent away to be educated as a boarder at Shrewsbury School , where one of his contemporaries was future comedian Michael Palin .

[1] His housemaster, Richard Hubert John Brooke , whom Peel described as "extraordinarily eccentric" and "amazingly perceptive", wrote on one of his school reports: Perhaps it's possible that John can form some kind of nightmarish career out of his enthusiasm for unlistenable records and his delight in writing long and facetious essays. [2] In his posthumously published autobiography, Peel revealed that he had been subjected to sexual abuse by an older pupil while at Shrewsbury. [3] After finishing his National Service in 1959 in the Royal Artillery as a B2 Radar Operator, he worked as a mill operative at Townhead Mill in Rochdale and travelled home each weekend to Heswall on a scooter borrowed from his sister. Whilst in Rochdale Monday to Friday he stayed in a bed and breakfast in the Milkstone Road / Drake Street area and developed long-term associations with Rochdale through the years. United States In 1960, he went to the United States to work for a cotton producer who had business dealings with his father.

Once this job had finished he took a number of others, including working as a travelling insurance salesman, remaining in the United States until 1967. While in Dallas, Texas, where the insurance company he worked for was based, he conversed with the presidential candidate John F. Kennedy , and his running mate Lyndon B. Johnson, who were touring the city during the 1960 election campaign, and took photographs of them. Following Kennedy's assassination he passed himself off as a reporter for the Liverpool Echo in order to attend the arraignment of Lee Harvey Oswald and he and a friend can be seen in the footage of the 22/23 November press conference shortly before Oswald's assassination. He later phoned in the story to the Liverpool Echo. [4] While working for an insurance company based in Dallas, Texas, filing card programs for an early IBM 1410 computer (which led to his entry in Who's Who noting him as a former computer programmer), he got his first radio job, albeit unpaid, working for WRR Radio in Dallas. There he presented the second hour of the Monday night programme Kat's Karavan .

Following this, and as Beatlemania hit the United States, Peel got a job as the official Beatles correspondent with the Dallas radio station KLIF , due to his connection to Liverpool. He later worked for KOMA in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma until 1965 when he moved to KMEN in San Bernardino, California, using the name John Ravencroft to present the breakfast show. While in Dallas, in 1965, he married his first wife, Shirley Anne Milburn , then aged 15, in what Peel later described as a "mutual defence pact". The marriage was never happy and although she accompanied Peel back to Britain in 1967, they were soon separated. The divorce became final in 1973. Shirley Anne Milburn later took her own life. [5] Return to Britain He returned to England in early 1967 and found work with the offshore pirate radio station Radio London . He was offered the midnight-to-two shift, which gradually developed into a program called The Perfumed Garden (some thought it was named after an erotic book famous at the time - which Peel claimed never to have read).

It was on "Big L" that he first adopted the name John Peel (the name was suggested by a Radio London secretary) and established himself as a distinctive radio voice. Peel's show was an outlet for the music of the UK underground scene. He played classic blues, folk music and psychedelic rock, with an emphasis on the new music emerging from Los Angeles and San Francisco. As important as the musical content of the programme was the personal — sometimes confessional — tone of Peel's presentation, and the listener participation it engendered. Underground events he had attended during his periods of shore leave, like the UFO Club and "The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream", together with causes célèbres like the drug "busts" of the Rolling Stones and John "Hoppy" Hopkins, were discussed between records. All this was far removed from Radio London's daytime format. Listeners sent Peel letters, poems, and records from their own collections, so that the programme became a vehicle for two-way communication; by the final week of Radio London he was receiving far more mail than any other DJ on the station.

After the closure of Radio London in 1967 Peel wrote a column under the title "The Perfumed Garden" for the underground newspaper the International Times (from autumn 1967 to mid-1969), in which he showed himself to be a committed, if critical, supporter of the ideals of the underground. A "Perfumed Garden" mailing list was set up by a group of keen listeners, which facilitated contacts and gave rise to numerous small-scale, local arts projects typical of the time, including the poetry magazine Sol. Studio in Broadcasting House BBC career When Radio London closed down on August 14, 1967, John Peel joined the BBC's new pop music station, BBC Radio One , which began broadcasting the following month. Unlike Big L, Radio 1 was not a full-time station, but a hybrid of recorded music and live studio orchestras broadcast at the same time as the talk and light music of BBC Radio Two. Peel recalled: I was one of the first lot on Radio 1 and I think it was mainly because ... Radio 1 had no real idea what they were doing so they had to take people off the pirate ships because there wasn't anybody else.

At first he was obliged to share presentation duties with other DJs ( Pete Drummond and Tommy Vance were among his co-hosts) but in February 1968 was given sole charge of Top Gear - a role which he held until the show ended in 1975 ; Peel played an eclectic mix of the music that caught his attention, which he would continue to do throughout his career. In 1969 , after hosting a trailer for a BBC programme on Venereal Disease on his Night Ride programme, Peel received significant media attention because he divulged on air that he had suffered from a sexually transmitted disease earlier that year. [6] This admission was later used in an attempt to discredit him when he appeared as a defence witness in the 1971 Oz obscenity trial. The Night Ride programme, advertised by the BBC as an exploration of words and music, seemed to take up from where The Perfumed Garden had left off. It featured rock, folk, blues, classical and electronic music.

A unique feature of the programme was the inclusion of tracks, mostly of exotic non-Western music, drawn from the BBC Sound Archive; the most popular of these were gathered on a BBC Records LP, John Peel's Archive Things (1970). Night Ride also featured poetry readings and numerous interviews with a wide range of guests, including personal friends Marc Bolan , journalist and musician Mick Farren, poet Pete Roche , and singer-songwriter Bridget St John and stars such as the Byrds , the Rolling Stones and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The programme captured much of the creative activity of the underground scene. Its anti-establishment stance and unpredictability did not find approval with the BBC hierarchy, and it ended in September 1969 after 18 months. In his sleeve notes to the Archive Things LP Peel calls the free-form nature of Night Ride his preferred radio format. His subsequent shows featured a mixture of records and live sessions, a format that would characterise his Radio 1 programmes for the rest of his career.

After separation from his first wife, Peel's personal life began to stabilise, as he found friendship and support from new Top Gear producer John Walters - and from a girlfriend whom he identified on-air as "the Pig". Eventually, on 31 August, 1974, Peel married Sheila Gilhooly . The reception was in London's Regent's Park, with Walters as best man. Peel wore Liverpool football colours (red) and walked down the aisle to the song " You'll Never Walk Alone ". Their sheepdog, Woggle, served as a bridesmaid. Peel's enthusiasm for music outside the mainstream occasionally brought him into conflict with the Radio 1 hierarchy. In early 1977 station controller Derek Chinnery contacted John Walters and asked him to confirm that the show was not playing any punk, which he (Chinnery) had read about in the press and disapproved of. Chinnery was evidently somewhat surprised by Walters' reply that in recent weeks they had been playing little else. [7] In 1979 Peel stated: "They leave you to get on with it. I'm paid money by the BBC not to go off and work for a commercial radio station ...

I wouldn't want to go to one anyway, because they wouldn't let me do what the BBC let me do." [8] Peel's reputation as an important DJ breaking unsigned acts into the mainstream was such that young hopefuls sent him an enormous number of records, CDs, and tapes. When he returned home from a three-week holiday at the end of 1986 there were 173 LPs, 91 12"s and 179 7"s waiting for him. In 1983 unsigned artist Billy Bragg drove to the Radio 1 studios with a mushroom biryani and a copy of his record after hearing Peel mention that he was hungry; the subsequent airplay launched his career. [9] Peel Acres In the 1970s Peel and Sheila moved to a thatched cottage in the village of Great Finborough near Stowmarket in Suffolk, nicknamed " Peel Acres ". In later years Peel broadcast many of his shows from a studio in the house, with Sheila and their children often being involved or at least mentioned. Peel's passion for Liverpool F.C.

was reflected in his children's names: William Robert Anfield , Alexandra Mary Anfield , Thomas James Dalglish , and Florence Victoria Shankly . His later shows also regularly featured live performances (broadcast live, unlike the pre-recorded Peel sessions), mostly from BBC Maida Vale Studios in West London, but occasionally in the Peel Acres living-room. In addition to his Radio 1 show, Peel broadcast as a disc jockey on the BBC World Service , on the British Forces Broadcasting Service BFBS (John Peel's Music on BFBS) for 30 years, VPRO Radio3 in the Netherlands, YLE Radio Mafia in Finland, Ö3 in Austria ( Nachtexpress ), and on Radio 4U, Radio Eins (Peel ...), Radio Bremen (Ritz) and some independent radio stations around FSK Hamburg in Germany. As a result of his BFBS programme he was voted, in Germany, "Top DJ in Europe". Peel was an occasional presenter of Top Of The Pops on BBC 1 TV from the late 1960s until the 1990s, and in particular from 1982 to 1987 when he appeared regularly.

In 1971 he appeared not as presenter but performer, alongside Rod Stewart and The Faces , pretending to play mandolin on "Maggie May". He often presented the BBC's television coverage of music events, notably the Glastonbury Festival . Later years Between 1995 and 1997, Peel presented a show about children, called Offspring, on BBC Radio 4. In 1998 , Offspring grew into the magazine-style documentary show Home Truths . When he took on the job presenting the programme, which was about everyday life in British families, Peel requested that it be free from celebrities, as he found real life stories more entertaining. Home Truths was described by occasional stand-in presenter John Walters as being "about people who had fridges called Renfrewshire". Peel also made regular contributions to BBC Two's humorous look at the irritations of modern life Grumpy Old Men . His only appearance in an acting role in film was in 1999 as a "grumpy old man who catalogues records" in Five Seconds To Spare , although he had provided narration for others.

He appeared as a celebrity guest on a number of TV shows, including This Is Your Life (1996, BBC), Travels With My Camera (1996, Channel 4 TV) and Going Home (2002, ITV TV), and presented the 1997 Channel 4 series Classic Trains . He was also in demand as a voice-over artist for television documentaries, such as BBC One's A Life Of Grime . At the age of 62 he was diagnosed with diabetes, following many years of fatigue. [10] In April 2003, the publishers Transworld successfully wooed Peel with a package worth up to £1.6 million for his autobiography, having placed an advert in a national newspaper aimed only at Peel.[citation needed] Unfinished at the time of his death it was completed by Sheila and journalist Ryan Gilbey. It was published in October 2005 under the title Margrave Of The Marshes . A collection of Peel's miscellaneous writings, The Olivetti Chronicles , was published in 2008.

Death Peel died suddenly at the age of 65 from a heart attack on 25 October 2004, on a working holiday in the Inca city of Cusco in Peru . Shortly after the announcement of his death, tributes began to arrive from fans and supporters both in and out of public life. On 26 October 2004 BBC Radio 1 cleared its schedules to broadcast a day of tributes. London's Evening Standard boards that afternoon read "the day the music died". Peel had often spoken wryly of his eventual death. He once said: "I've always imagined I'd die by driving into the back of a truck while trying to read the name on a cassette and people would say, 'He would have wanted to go that way.' Well, I want them to know that I wouldn't." [11] At one point, he said that if he died before his producer John Walters , he wanted the latter to play Roy Harper's " When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease ".

Walters having died in 2001, [12] it was left to Andy Kershaw to end his tribute programme to Peel on BBC Radio 3 with the song. [13] Peel's stand-in on his Radio 1 slot, Rob Da Bank , also played the song at the start of the final show before his funeral. [14] Another time, Peel said he would like to be remembered with a gospel song. He stated that the final record he would play would be the Rev CL Franklin 's sermon "Dry Bones in The Valley". On his Home Truths BBC radio show John once commented about his own death: "I definitely want to be buried, although not yet. I'm 61 on Wednesday—just a working day for me, I'm afraid—so actually I should have a mile or two left in me, but I do want the children to be able to stand solemnly at my graveside and think lovely thoughts along the lines of 'Get out of that one, you swine', which they won't be able to do if I've been cremated.

I think I want 'Teenage dreams, so hard to beat' on my gravestone and every night at dusk the trumpeters of the 5th Battalion King's Shropshire Light Infantry to play Misty in Roots' 'Mankind' over the grave. Lovely." [15] Peel's funeral, on 12 November 2004, in Bury St Edmunds , Suffolk, was attended by over a thousand people, including many of the artists he had championed. Eulogies were read by his brother, Alan Ravenscroft , and DJ Paul Gambaccini . The service ended with clips of him talking about his life and his coffin was carried out to the accompaniment of his favourite song, The Undertones ' " Teenage Kicks ". [16] Peel had written that, apart from his name, all he wanted on his gravestone were the words, "Teenage dreams, so hard to beat", from the lyrics of "Teenage Kicks". [17] A headstone engraved in accordance with his wishes was placed at his grave in 2008. [18] Peel is buried at St Andrew's Church , in the village of Great Finborough , Suffolk.

Life in music See also: Sessions , Peel Sessions Releases A feature of Peel's BBC Radio One shows were the famous John Peel Sessions, which usually consisted of four pieces of music pre-recorded at the BBC's studios. The sessions originally came about due to restrictions imposed on the BBC by the Musicians' Union and Phonographic Performances Limited, which represented the record companies dominated by the EMI cartel, the BBC had been forced to hire bands and orchestras to render cover versions of recorded music. The theory behind this device was that it would create employment and force people to buy records and not listen to them free of charge on the air. One of the reasons why all of the offshore broadcasting stations of the 1960s were called "pirates" was because they operated outside of British laws and were not bound by the needle time restriction on the number of records they could play on the air. The BBC employed its own house bands and orchestras and it also engaged outside bands to record exclusive tracks for its programs in BBC studios. This process, detailed in the early chapters of Ken Garner 's The Peel Sessions, was the reason why Peel was able to (or obliged to) use "sessions" in his own programs.

Sessions were usually four tracks recorded and mixed in a single day; as such they often had a rough and ready, demo-like feel, somewhere between a live performance and a finished recording. Many classic Peel Sessions have been released on record, particularly by the Strange Fruit label. Festive Fifty Main article: Festive Fifty An annual tradition of Peel's Radio 1 show was the Festive Fifty — a countdown of the best tracks of the year as voted for by the listeners. Despite Peel's eclectic play list, the Festive Fifty tended to be composed largely of "white boys with guitars", as Peel complained in 1988 . In 1991 the broadcast of the chart was cancelled due to a lack of votes, although many have speculated that it was because it didn't feature a single entry from the dance acts that Peel had been championing that year. Topped by Nirvana 's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", this Phantom Fifty was eventually broadcast at the rate of one track per programme in 1993 .

The 1997 chart was initially cancelled due to the lack of air-time Peel had been allocated for the period, but enough "spontaneous" votes were received over the phone that a Festive Thirty-One was compiled and broadcast. Peel wrote: "The Festive 50 dates back to what was doubtless a crisp September morning in the early-to-mid Seventies, when John Walters and I were musing on life in his uniquely squalid office. In our waggish way, we decided to mock the enthusiasm of the Radio 1 management of the time for programmes with alliterative titles. Content, we felt, was of less importance than a snappy Radio Times billing.

In the course of our historic meeting we had, I imagine, some fine reasons for dismissing the idea of a Festive 40 and going instead for a Festive 50, a decision that was to ruin my Decembers for years to come, condemning me to night after night at home with a ledger, when I could have been out and about having fun, fun, fun." [19] After his death, the Festive Fifty was continued on Radio 1 by Rob Da Bank , Huw Stephens and Ras Kwame for two years, but then given to Peel-inspired Internet radio station Dandelion Radio , which continues to compile it to this day. Dandelion Records and Strange Fruit Main articles: Dandelion Records , Strange Fruit In 1969 Peel founded Dandelion Records (named after his pet hamster) so he could release the debut album by Bridget St John , which he also produced. The label released 27 albums by 18 different artists before folding in 1972.

Of its albums, There Is Some Fun Going Forward was a sampler intended to present its acts to a wide audience, however Dandelion was never a great success with only two releases charting in national charts: Medicine Head in the UK with "(And The) Pictures In The Sky" and Beau in Lebanon with "1917 Revolution". In 1972, the second album for the label by Tractor reached number 18 in the Radio Luxembourg chart and number 30 in the Virgin Shops best selling album chart. Peel continued throughout his career to maintain a close link with Tractor and Rochdale. As Peel stated, It was never a success financially. In fact, we lost money, if I remember correctly, on every single release bar one. I did quite like it but it was terribly indulgent. Not as indulgent as it would have been had I not had a business partner, admittedly... I liked having a label. It enabled you to put out stuff that you liked without, in those days, having to worry about whether it was going to work commercially. I've never been a good business man.

In the 1980s Peel set up the Strange Fruit record label with Clive Selwood to release material recorded by the BBC for Peel Sessions. Favourite music John Peel wrote in his autobiography, Margrave of the Marshes , that the band of which he owned the most records was The Fall . Regulars in the Festive 50 , and easily recognised by vocalist Mark E. Smith 's distinctive delivery, The Fall became synonymous with Peel's Radio 1 show through the 1980s and 1990s. Peel kept in contact with many of the artists he championed but only met Smith on two, apparently awkward, occasions. The Misunderstood is the only band that Peel ever personally managed—he first met the band in Riverside, California in 1966 and convinced them to move to London.

He championed their music throughout his career; in 1968 , he described their 1966 single "I Can Take You to the Sun" as "the best popular record that's ever been recorded." [20] and shortly before his death, he stated: "If I had to list the ten greatest performances I've seen in my life, one would be The Misunderstood at Pandora's Box, Hollywood, 1966 ... My god, they were a great band!" [21] His favourite single is widely known to have been " Teenage Kicks " by The Undertones ; in an interview in 2001, he stated "There's nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it." [22] In the same 2001 interview, he also listed "No More Ghettos in America" by Stanley Winston , "There Must Be Thousands" by The Quads and "Lonely Saturday Night" by Don French as being among his all-time favourites. He also described Lianne Hall as one of the great English voices.

A longer list of his favourite singles was revealed in 2005 when the contents of a wooden box in which he stored the records that meant the most to him were made public. The box was the subject of a television documentary, John Peel's Record Box . Out of 130 vinyl singles in the box, 11 of them were by The White Stripes , more than any other band in the box. In 1999 Peel presented a nightly segment on his programme titled the Peelenium , in which he played four recordings from each year of the 20th century. Awards and honorary degrees Peel was 11 times Melody Makers DJ of the year, Sony Broadcaster of the Year in 1993, winner of the Godlike Genius Award from the NME in 1994, Sony Gold Award winner in 2002 and is a member of the Radio Academy Hall of Fame. At the NME awards in 2005 he was Hero of the Year and was posthumously given a special award for "Lifelong Service To Music". At the same event the "John Peel Award For Musical Innovation" was awarded to The Others.

He was awarded many honorary degrees including an MA from the University of East Anglia, doctorates (Anglia Polytechnic University and Sheffield Hallam University), various honorary degrees (University of Liverpool, [[Open University, University of Portsmouth, University of Bradford) and a fellowship of Liverpool John Moores University. He was appointed an OBE in 1998, for his services to British music. In that year he was also voted 47th in a Cosmopolitan readers' poll of the Top 50 Most Lovable Men in the World. [23] In 2002, the BBC conducted a vote to discover the 100 Greatest Britons of all time. Peel was voted 43rd. [24] Legacy Since his death various parties have recognised Peel's influence. A stage for new bands at the Glastonbury Festival , previously known as "The New Bands Tent" was renamed "The John Peel Stage" in 2005, while in 2008 Merseytravel announced they would be naming a train after him. The John Peel Centre for Creative Arts opened in Stowmarket in early 2013.

The main purposes of the centre is to serve as a live venue for music and performance and as a community meeting point. [25] In 2009 the first blue plaque to bear his name was unveiled in Heywood, part of Rochdale, Greater Manchester, to recognise Peel's contribution to the local music industry in financing Tractor's recording studios in the 1970s on the third floor of 58,Market St/ 2,Dawson St. the plaque is on the front of the building i.e. 58,Market St, Heywood. On 13 October 2005, the first "John Peel Day" was held to mark the anniversary of his last show. [26] The BBC encouraged as many bands as possible to stage gigs on the 13th, and over 500 gigs took place in the UK and as far away as Canada and New Zealand, from bands ranging from Peel favourites New Order and The Fall , to many new and unsigned bands. A second John Peel day was held on 12 October 2006, and a third on 11 October 2007.

The BBC had originally planned to hold a John Peel Day annually, but Radio 1 has not held any official commemoration of the event since 2007, though gigs still take place around the country to mark the anniversary. [27] At the annual Gilles Peterson's World Wide Awards, the "John Peel Play More Jazz Award" award was named in his honour. In his Heswall birthplace a pub was opened, named The Ravenscroft, in his honour. [28] Several Peel-related compilation albums have been released since his death, including John Peel and Sheila: The Pig's Big 78s: A Beginner's Guide , a project Peel started with his wife that was left unfinished when he died, and Kats Karavan: The History of John Peel on the Radio (2009), a 4 CD box set. Rock music critic Peter Paphides said in a review of the box set that "[s]ome artists remain forever associated with him", including ...And The Native Hipsters with "There Goes Concorde Again", and Ivor Cutler with "Jam". A sizable online community has also emerged dedicated to sharing recordings of his radio shows.

Peel's adult sons Tom and William Ravenscroft have followed him into radio DJing and music journalism, with an emphasis on spotting new talent. In 2011, BBC Radio 6 Music inaugurated the annual John Peel Lecture , named in honour of the DJ. In 2012, the BBC announced that part of Broadcasting House, the Egdon Wing, would be renamed the Peel Wing. Following the death of Jimmy Savile when there were numerous revelations about sexual misconduct between some broadcasters and under-age girls, and Peel's own autobiography in which he acknowledged a relationship with a 15-year-old girl in 1969, during which she became pregnant, it was announced in October 2012 that the decision would be reviewed. [29] However, as of August 2013 no outcome of this review has been announced, and consequently the building is still known as the Peel Wing. In May 2012, a campaign was started to turn demolition-threatened Bradford Odeon into the John Peel Creative Arts Centre in the North. It is proposed that part of his record collection be housed there. The building would be converted back to a live music venue.

His wife Sheila was brought up in the Bradford area. Related Pages For a list of albums played completely or in great part on his shows, see Album Plays . For a list of his choices for Radio 4's long-running celebrity profile series, see Desert Island Discs . For an exploration of John's fascination with England's national sport, see Football . For a list of records featuring or mentioning Peel, see Peel On Record For a list of session artists, see Sessions (Artists A) to Sessions (Artists Z) . External links John Peel Biography (Radio Personality) Died: 25 October 2004 (heart attack) Birthplace: Heswall, England Best known as: Influential British DJ from BBC's Radio 1 Name at birth: John Ravenscroft John Peel was a disc jockey on BBC's Radio 1 whose 37 years of broadcasting out-of-the-mainstream acts helped popularize reggae, punk and hip-hop in Britain. Peel got his radio start in the United States in the early 1960s, working in Texas, Oklahoma and California.

In 1967 he returned to the United Kingdom and began a late-night program, The Perfumed Garden, on a pirate radio station called Radio London. Later that year he was hired by Radio 1 and began a show called Top Gear. Peel's genuine interest in a wide variety of musical styles and his low-key on-air personality helped make him one of the most popular and influential broadcasters in the U.K. In 1986 he began what were called The Peel Sessions, studio recordings of little-known bands that were then packaged and sold as EPs and LPs. In addition to his show on Radio 1, Peel hosted a radio magazine, Home Truths, on Radio 4, which first aired in 1998. He is credited with helping the careers of dozens of bands and artists, from Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa and David Bowie to The Ramones , Joy Division and The White Stripes . In 2003 he agreed to write his autobiography, but in 2004 he died suddenly of a heart attack while on vacation in Peru. Copyright © 1998-2017 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.

Advertisement Advertisement In his own words, the teenage rape of John Peel - Telegraph In his own words, the teenage rape of John Peel John Peel said he became inured to abuse at school By Andrew Alderson, Chief Reporter 12:01AM BST 09 Oct 2005 John Peel, the disc jockey, wrote shortly before he died about his rape by an older pupil at boarding school. In his autobiography, serialised from today in The Sunday Telegraph, he speaks of "systematic sexual abuse" at Shrewsbury School in Shropshire, which he attended from the age of 13. Peel wrote of the sexual demands made on new boys from "study monitors", who were four or five years older. The BBC disc jockey, who died a year ago at the age of 65 from a heart attack while holidaying in Peru, wrote: "Another study monitor obliged me to perform an even more unwelcome service during what was supposed to be a period for doing homework. This period, during which we were confined to our studies, was called 'top schools', but for my study monitor it was 'hand jobs'.

Related Articles "If for some reason my tormentor didn't require a hand job, possibly because he had already compelled another small boy to give him one, he loaned me to one of his two friends and I was obliged to service them instead. "This man - and although it is tempting to name him, I'm not going to - was, I think, the only genuinely amoral person I've ever met. Towards the end of our time together, he compelled me to agree to meet him in a public toilet in the cemetery on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, where he raped me. Oddly enough, much as I hated the experience, I think I had become so accustomed to systematic sexual abuse that I wasn't especially traumatised by the experience. "However, it was many years before I could bring myself to tell anyone what had happened to me, and when I did tell Sheila, my wife, one afternoon in the Eighties as we drove through Shrewsbury and past the cemetery toilet block, she found it, I think, more upsetting than I ever did.

We have not spoken of it again … "It's hard to believe it now, I admit, but when I was 13 or 14 I was kinda cute and therefore craved by quite a few older boys. They were not, generally speaking, interested in penetration, but more, as we have seen, in what we have come to know as relief - massage or even, in the absence of the below-stairs staff or hunting dogs they possibly slept with at home, warmth. "Having experienced few physical expressions of affection at home - something that would have been true, I imagine, of almost every boy in the house - I was rather flattered by these attentions and was aware, too, that the only people to whom I could turn for help were, by and large, the very people who yearned to cuddle me." The Sunday Telegraph traced Peel's oldest and closest friend, "Sparrow" Harrison, who said that the disc jockey had told him about the rape two years ago over a pint in a pub near Peel's home in Suffolk. "I was rather touched John told me something so personal, but I never spoke about it to anyone else," said Mr Harrison, 66.

He said that he knew the identity of the man who was alleged to have raped Peel shortly after he arrived at the school in 1953. Out of curiosity, Mr Harrison traced the alleged abuser and discovered that he was living in Wales. Mr Harrison refused to identify the man and said he had not put Peel's allegations to him because the events had happened so long ago. He said: "I had known the man socially because we had lived in the same area and, even before John told me his story, I never liked him - whereas John was such a decent, humble man. Anyway, I am told that life for John's abuser has not gone according to plan." Mr Harrison, a businessman and farmer, who lives in north Wales, was not a pupil at Shrewsbury, an all-boys school where fees are now more than £7,500 a term. However, he and Peel attended Woodlands prep school in Deganwy, north Wales. In the book, Peel says that Sparrow, as a talented boxer, was "a useful friend at Woodlands" where bullying was "pretty much endemic".

Peel, whose real name was John Ravenscroft, had time to write only half of his memoirs, Margrave of the Marshes, but the work was completed by his wife and their four children within months of his death. John Peel biography | birthday, trivia | British Radio Personality | Who2 Name at birth: John Ravenscroft John Peel was a disc jockey on BBC’s Radio 1 whose 37 years of broadcasting out-of-the-mainstream acts helped popularize reggae, punk and hip-hop in Britain. Peel got his radio start in the United States in the early 1960s, working in Texas, Oklahoma and California. In 1967 he returned to the United Kingdom and began a late-night program, The Perfumed Garden, on a pirate radio station called Radio London. Later that year he was hired by Radio 1 and began a show called Top Gear. Peel’s genuine interest in a wide variety of musical styles and his low-key on-air personality helped make him one of the most popular and influential broadcasters in the U.K. In 1986 he began what were called The Peel Sessions, studio recordings of little-known bands that were then packaged and sold as EPs and LPs.

In addition to his show on Radio 1, Peel hosted a radio magazine, Home Truths, on Radio 4, which first aired in 1998. He is credited with helping the careers of dozens of bands and artists, from Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa and David Bowie to The Ramones , Joy Division and The White Stripes . In 2003 he agreed to write his autobiography, but in 2004 he died suddenly of a heart attack while on vacation in Peru.

Question: Disc jockey John Ravenscroft was better known by what name?
Answer: John Peel